Japanese literature

(Newser) - Japan is celebrating the 1,000th birthday of The Tale of Genji, a story penned by a woman in an imperial court that is widely regarded as the first modern novel, the Economist reports. The chronicle of an aristocratic aesthete’s sexual adventures is many things to many readers, including...

(Newser) - Japan’s literary world has been rocked by the ascendancy of cell phone novels: serial works written mainly by young women on their phone keypads. The New York Times reports five of 2007’s 10 bestsellers were cell phone novels reprinted as conventional books—despite the fact that the country’...